Earliest hand-held wooden tools found in Greece date back 430,000 years

February 1, 2026


by University of Tübingen

edited by Stephanie Baum, reviewed by Robert Egan

An international team has discovered the earliest known hand-held wooden tools used by humans. A study jointly led by Professor Katerina Harvati from the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen and Dr. Annemieke Milks at the University of Reading describes discoveries from the Marathousa 1 site, in Greece's central Peloponnese, dating back 430,000 years.

Published in the journal PNAS, the finds consist of two objects crafted and used by humans, one made of alder wood and the other of willow or poplar. The objects represent the oldest hand-held wooden tools ever found, pushing back evidence of this type of tool use by at least 40,000 years.

Other finds of stone tools and the remains of an elephant and other animals indicate that the site, once on the shore of a lake, was used for butchering animals. The site was used by early humans around 430,000 years ago during the Middle Pleistocene—the period from around 774,000 to 129,000 years ago.

"The Middle Pleistocene was a critical phase in human evolution, during which more complex behaviors developed. The earliest reliable evidence of the targeted technological use of plants also dates from this period," says Professor Katerina Harvati, a paleoanthropologist and expert in human evolution, who leads the long-term research program at Marathousa 1.

More:
https://phys.org/news/2026-01-earliest-held-wooden-tools-greece.html